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Rain - During the march from Plabennec to the vicinity of Lorient, the company encountered its first rainy weather on French soil. Rain fell continuously on August 21 during the eight hours it took the convoy to cover the 96 miles from Plabennec to a new bivouac four miles southeast of Plouay, into which men and vehicles moved at 6 p.m. When the march began at 10 a.m., all windshields and truck tops were down, so when the rain came, many men were soaked before they could raise the tops. Arriving at the stopping point near Plouay, the company was bivouacked in a half-dozen fields separated by a road and the ever-present hedgerows. "B" Company stayed there 26 days, a period which afforded another opportunity for rest, since maintenance work was not heavy while combat elements were merely containing the enemy pocket at Lorient as they had at Brest. |
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Holding - CCB and CCR were left at Lorient when the rest of the division headed east. On September 1, all of the battalion except "B" and "C" Companies, which remained in support of CCB and CCR, left to join the remainder of the division near Chateauneuf, some 400 miles east. "There was little excitement in the Plouay bivouac, 12 miles from Lorient, except for the time during the first week when German paratroopers had the misfortune to land right in combat elements of the division. They did no damage, but they did cause an alert for a day and a night in "B" Company. On August 21, the day the company reached Plouay, it was rejoined by Venator who had been injured in the July 31 bombing. Also coming back to the company here was Lt. Anderson who had escaped from German captivity. A new arrival in the organization at Plouay was Lt. Robert H. Foster, who came on September 2. Although the men experienced no enemy action in the Lorient area, German planes were over nightly, and the sound of artillery fire, as American guns shelled the town, went on night and day. Here, a novel feature was instituted at the kitchen -- the "you-bring-em-and-we'll-cook-'em plan" as applied to eggs which the men of the company secured from natives through trades of one sort and another. Eggs were plentiful, and the men had no trouble getting them, so they brought their own to the kitchen each morning and the cooks prepared them according to each man's taste.  Church at Plouay, scene of division memorial service It was here too that many learned of the potency of that drink, Calvados. One such was T-4 Joseph "Buzz-Bomb" Budz. Late one afternoon a poker game was underway at Second Echelon, and a Calvados bottle was circling the players fast -- too fast for the "Buzz-Bomb." Joe, after a series of nips, picked up his hand, took one look at the cards, and promptly passed out. In the hand were four kings, and in Joe's stomach was Calvados, a combination to be withstood only by a superman. Another event of the stay at Lorient was the shave in which "Rugged" Mushik indulged, his first in France. Evacuated from the company because of poor physical condition on September 8 was Pvt. Edwin R. "Pappy" Bradford. Also evacuated at Plouay was T-5 John P. Roth, who got something in his eye while roadtesting a tank. He had to be hospitalized, and did not rejoin the company until Flocourt. Coming back on September 4 was Pvt. Frank McNamee who had sustained a broken collarbone in a peep accident in England while driving Lt. Young. Evacuation section had one of its toughest assignments while at Plouay. For seven days and nights, they worked almost without pause retrieving knocked-out and broken-down tanks and other combat vehicles and hauling them to Orleans, about 220 miles east. On one trip back from Orleans to the Plouay area, the crews of the three lumbering movers fixed exactly 18 flat tires. During one of the Plouay-to-Orleans runs, one of the movers had halted to replace some broken rim bolts. T-5 Carl P. "Rosie" Haynes was up in the cab of the vehicle to get a wrench when a soldier of the 15th Tank Battalion, riding with the mover crew, said to Rosie: "Man, you're a good-looking fellow, do you know that?" Rosie, who had started out of the cab -- and it stuck high up in the air -- got flustered, missed his step, and fell hard to the ground. Picking himself up, he remarked, "I may be good-looking, but I'm also kind of awkward!" When the company moved out of the Plouay area on the morning of September 17, it began a long trek across France to rejoin the division which was fighting east of Nancy at the time, a series of marches covering a total of 543 miles. Since the company was given the job of clearing the Lorient area of all knocked-out division equipment, its column on the move east to Orleans was sprinkled with surplus vehicles, either carried on prime movers or towed. |
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"C'est la Guerre" - T-4 Buster "Buck" Reagan, towing one medium tank with another, had his troubles at LaFleche -- or certainly dumped some trouble in the lap of a Frenchman there. In fact, he dumped the towed tank right into the Frenchman's store, tearing out the front and a side of the building in so doing. Several times on the trip, the clevis pin on his tank came loose, dropping the tow bar from the tank behind him, but the climax came about 2 o'clock one morning at LaFleche. Thinking he had succeeded in fixing the tow bar arrangement so it would come loose no more, he was barrelling down a hill into the town at top speed. On a curve at the bottom of the hill where the town began, he felt a jerk, and having a good idea of what had happened, he brought his tank to a halt as quickly as possible. mailbox-message://nobody@Local%20Folders/Inbox#9862  Medium tank on a prime mover What he saw behind him fulfilled his worst expectations. The towed tank had come loose from that which was pulling it on the curve, and had gone straight ahead to crash into a store, tearing out the front and one side of the building. He was relieved, however, to learn that no one had been hurt, and as for the French residents of the neighborhood who had gathered to see what happened, they passed it off with a Gallic shrug and the expression, "C'est la guerre!" At LaFleche, part of the company, inculding [including] First Maintenance and Evacuation Sections, stopped for repair work. Having left Plouay a few days before the rest of the company, here they were passed by the other elements of the organization, and now found themselves 200 miles behind the rest who were in bivouac near Lorris. Part of their repair work at LaFleche included the replacement of several tank engines, which they had to make a 400-mile round trip to get from Lorris, where they finally joined the balance of the company. In the general movement from Plouay, the first day, September 17, saw the convoy cover 185 miles, passing through, the towns of Josselin, Chateaubriant, Sirge and LaFleche to bivouac in a big field near Le Lude. Starting again at 9 o'clock the following morning, the column made its way through Chateau du Loire, Vendome, Beaugenncy, Orleans and Chateauneuf on the Loire river, covering 125 miles. |
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The Pine Forest - Bivouacking in a thick pine forest seven miles west of Lorris near Orleans, the company spent four days on maintenance and other work connected with a general refitting of the division, which was in process at the time. Engines and other major assemblies were being replaced after the wear and tear of the Brest campaign. So crowded was the shop that the men had to work day and night, and since there were no buildings to use for shops, blackout simply was ignored. During the whole night, bright beams of light from the various jobs could be seen shining through the thick forest up into the sky. It was a strange sight to men who bad become so accustomed to unbroken darkness at night -- it was almost heresy, so ingrained had the blackout habit become. During the four days in the pine forest between Lorris and Chateauneuf, several meals of a strictly non-G. I. nature were served by the kitchen as a result of the capture of a considerable quantity of German food and drink. Startled G. I.'s, used to K and C rations and 10-in-1's, thought it all a dream when they found steak and mushrooms in their messkits and a bottle of wine in their hands as they passed through the chowline. It was a beautiful dream though.  Bombed bridge at Orleans And speaking of dreams, PFC Robert J. "Sleepy" Gibbs came out of one of those, which kept his army time occupied, long enough to do a thorough job of telling off two sergeants of the Second Maintenance Section. These two sergeants, who will have to go unnamed, were being driven in a 3/4-ton truck during the move through Orleans on September 18 by Sleepy. At Orleans, the pair got themselves and Gibbs lost purposely, and left Sleepy to guard the truck while they went wandering around the town, and got drunk. Left with the truck, no chow and no fun, Sleepy was in a mood for action when the errant sergeants returned to the vehicle. The only reason a PFC didn't beat up two sergeants that day was that they refused to do battle with him. Sleepy was ready, willing and able. |
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Long March - Once more, the company was left behind as the others moved eastward. Finishing the work left behind for them, "B" Company men moved out at 6:45 a.m.on September 23. On this day, the convoy covered 202 miles, the longest march of any single day to be made by the company in the European war, reaching a bivouac area near Martigny at 6 p.m. Towns along the route included Montargis, Sens, Troyes, Jainville and Neufchateau. Once more bivouacked in a heavily wooded area northwest of Neufchateau, here it was that the men got a taste of what was in store for them during the European fall season. Rain fell continually during their four-day stay there, and that French mud, than which there is nothing "gooier," became deep. In addition, it was beginning to turn cold. Despite the disadvantages of inclement weather and the lack of a good working place, maintenance work went on. The presence of two large haystacks not far from the bivouac area was greatly appreciated, and soon after their discovery, most puptents had combination straw floors and mattresses. Leaving Martigny on the afternoon of September 27, the company travelled 30 miles east to an airport just outside the city of Nancy where it bivouacked in the semi-ruined hangars of the bombed airport. Pvt. William A. Pancook, hospitalized at Lorris at the same time -- September 20 -- as T-4 Lawton W. Vann, who was injured doing maintenance work, did not come to Nancy with the company, and neither did Asa Cope who had been injured and hospitalized a few days earlier. Cope was the only one of the above trio, who left the company at Lorris, to return to the organization. |